


Crucible

by deathwailart



Category: Original Work
Genre: Elves, Fire, Gen, Goddesses, Horror, Implied Torture, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They tore down all their old idols for her, this thing that crawled from a great crack in the earth that belched fire, thick sulphurous clouds of black smoke and burning rock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crucible

They tore down all their old idols for her, this thing that crawled from a great crack in the earth that belched fire, thick sulphurous clouds of black smoke and burning rock. She was unburnt, radiating heat with glowing eyes, blood red, brimming with power and want. She clawed her way free from whatever pit had run deep beneath the earth with her long strong fingers ending in cruel nails, reminding them of the eagles, black as coal. The fissure in the earth she had appeared from had come after a lengthy period of foul storms where great forks of lightning arced down from the heavens, scorching land where they met the earth allowing fire to ravage the land. Never again would life bloom where she rose from. Where once lush green grasses had grown there was but a desert, a vast empty plain where dust devils were whipped up by the winds. Mountains that had once had great waterfalls pouring down them into little rivers did not dry up but instead evaporated into a thick steam that would never fully leave, ever lingering to trap the foul vapours belching forth from her pit so that no life would ever come to the lands. What little water remained grew stagnant and poisoned. The beasts became twisted with blood and fire dripping from their twisted mouths, skeletal and cruel creatures that she gathered to her.  
  
Those were in days to come.  
  
The elves came, drawn to the great calamity with morbid curiosity and great fire, clutching their weapons with many healers for they knew not what they might find there. When she appeared though they dropped to their knees for never had such a creature ever seemed possible to their minds with all their gentle gods and goddesses who had cupped their cheeks with soft palms whispering with softer words. She stood before these frightened people and smiled her hungry smile with her bloody lips and golden tongue, the most terrible sight they had ever beheld but they could not look away. Everything about her flickered and crackled for she was clothed in fire, great rippling swathes of it that trailed behind her, danced at the ends of her long nails, her hair falling over her shoulders in great braids of molten metal. Long black horns spiralled from her skull to end in wicked gleaming points as they dripped sizzling black tar down her cracked skin, hissing as it hit the ground. Beneath her faint, impossibly delicate and childlike but still the same black as her horns, the world bubbled and boiled, hissing and cracked and never did her footsteps fade from the world as she began her ascent up the high mountain. Long did the elves stand and take counsel with one another until they split into three camps with one group choosing to follow her, another choosing to return home with the last and smallest camp undecided. They remained where they were until they were entirely alone with their fellows but specks in the distance whereupon some hurried to catch up with either camp but they could not for they cut their feet and choked on sudden smoke of impenetrable darkness. They drowned in their own blistered lungs and screamed as their eyes became jellied pools in their sockets until at last they collapsed to the ground, blind and gurgling. Their bones remained gleaming as if made of polished haematite and the crows perched upon them in days to come.  
  
The elves who followed her up the mountain wept no tears for their dead kin when they found them for they had not made a choice and always a choice had to be made. She gathered them upon the mountain and bid them watch as she sent cascades of lava and molten rock to spill down where once water had flowed and then offered them what she could. The fire folk, the unburnt, the scorched and reborn – these elves who embraced her with open arms and took some of her fire into themselves to wield it as they would. The fire of knowledge, that was what she gave them. And where once they had blood they then had lava and their bones became rock, blackened but strong and forever were their nails black too, soot staining their fingers and their eyes reflected flames and lightning always, the edges of their pupils jagged as the hole she left in the earth. They delighted in crafting for who better to run forges than those who were fire? They sang too, composed ballads and sonnets for her and would knee before her blackened throne and lift up their voices to her. Many names they gave her. She never knew her own name nor gave herself one so they mattered little but the fire folk were hers and though not dear to her, she valued them, wanted them lest any of the others come for them or their own deities reclaim them. None refused her gifts save those who had tarried at the fissure or those who had scurried to their original settlements, the ones who still prayed to those who had first made them until the fire folk drove them off until they reached the seas for water could quench fire and they quailed at the sight of it.  
  
The wrath of the fire folk was fierce to behold even when she did not whisper to them for though they contained their tempers well, when roused to fight they were terrifying, falling upon those who had drawn their ire with great fury. She would watch from her temple on high surrounded by the everlasting lakes of lava and pillars of flame, surrounded by her priests and priestesses and smile her unholy smile showing her jagged teeth and forked tongue for she grew strong in her temple with their devotion. Other elves came, drawn by folly to try to strike down the wicked folk, urged on to their deaths by their gods and goddesses who could not comprehend the violence of fire or how hot and bright ambition burned. Her beasts had grown large and spilled fire from their chests and mouths and they hunted relentlessly. Other creatures had grown fat and when they bit or stang it was described as the most horrendous pain one could ever feel; how could any save the fire folk and their terrible queen know what it was to feel their blood boil? Indeed they had been reforged to allow it. Fragile bodies of blood and white bone could not cope and so many died howling in anguish and terror as their flesh melted from within so they stopped coming to attack although they swore vows to demolish her mountain and drown all her followers, to blow her foul mists and smoke away and cleanse the land.  
  
So she gave a second gift to her fire folk to corrupt the symbol of the great god king and queen who had come at first and who tried to end her rule over these folk even as others such as she rose up in the seas, in the mountains, in the forests, crept in shadows, cowled themselves in bright lights and perverted all that had once been made with love and care.  
  
The lion was their beast with his proud bearing and mane of flames and the muscled huntress females; to her priests and priestesses did she bequeath these forms to. The elves rejoiced, running and hunting down their own kind and the wild animals of forests returning to her with blood matting their golden fur so that she might scratch them beneath their chins with her terrible talons until they took their own shapes once more. They did not hunt simply to satisfy hunger. They hunted to terrify the elves and beasts that lived in the forests, arrogant in their power. Pride will be their downfall was a familiar refrain amongst the many people who still clung to the old ways though it proved hard to remember when lions cornered them then turned to their true selves, as fair as the elves they caught but for the glittering malice in their eyes. For their queen, their goddess, their fire and most precious creature wanted sport, wanted to watch others twist and writhe as she put her hands upon them, even before she let any of her fire kiss them. Her talons drawing blood at the slightest caress. When she kissed them she breathed fire into them and twisted them into wraiths, bound them deep in her mountain fortress for war would come and she had need of an army, an army of fire and shadows to strike fear into those who dared defy her.  
  
She would nurse her molten wrath well, keep it warm pooling in her belly to unleash it when the time was right. Lava would spill down the mountainside to blanket the land to be cooled only by the blood of her enemies when the day of reckoning came. She smiled her awful smile, beckoned one of her favoured priests forward and grabbed at his long hair, the colour of flames but still smooth as silk, sinfully cool beneath her palm.  
  
"Sing for me Cináed," she crooned letting fire from her fingers lick at his flesh to brighten the sculpted planes of his face, "born of fire sing for your queen."  
  
And smiling he knelt at her feet to pluck his golden harp with those blackened hands, singing of her glory and she basked in the warmth of the praise as more prisoners danced in agony to the flaming whips she turned on them. She had given this world the queen it deserved; none would take her title from her.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely satisfied with this – I don't think I managed to convey what I could see in my own head (isn't that always how it goes) – but I'm still glad I managed to finish it seeing as it's been living in my wip folder since last summer I think. Even though this was meant to be companion piece to [Scourge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/545082), the writing style ended up very different so this is much more like meta or a codex entry in comparison.
> 
> Influences when writing this – The Silmarillion (specifically Sauron and Melkor/Morgoth) the queen from Snow White and the Huntsman, Seven Devils by Florence and the Machine, Fire and Blood from the GoT soundtrack


End file.
